Guess the Artist

Your clues this week are:

• The artist was Flemish, and worked during the Baroque period. (This narrows things down to +/- 500 people.)
• The artist trained in watercolors in order to design tapestries, but quickly adapted to oils upon discovering that allegories, history paintings, and genre scenes were big ticket items.
• From late-mid to early-late career stages, the artist was in demand for royal portrait commissions.
  
  And
  
  
• The artist died of what was called "Antwerp disease," which is described online ad nauseam as "mysterious." Let me tell you, it really grates my cheese when every Tom, Dick and Harry on the internet lazily copies the same phrase. Unacceptable! It took a ton of research and, eventually, my limited Dutch to discover that "Antwerp disease" was not bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, or what was known as "English Sweating Sickness." So what was it? Most probably a virulent strain of the flu.

Please email me your guesses over the coming week. I'll post the winner and correct answer with next week's guessing game. Good luck!

Last Week's Answer:

The artist was Georg Flegel (German, 1566-1638), who was born in Olmütz, Moravia. In his still life Meal with Bread and Sweetmeats (ca. 1637), the Marienkäfer is the ladybug. A ladybug, as it turns out, can go by an awful lot of local names. In Germany, they are known as Marienkäfer ("Mary beetle") because their red "capes" resemble the one allegedly worn by the Holy Mother. Smarajit, a medical doctor in Delhi, knew the artist (and his teacher) first, while Tui is now our resident expert on the Christian and pagan symbolism of ladybugs. Congratulations to you both!